Where Does the Time Go?

boucle2It’s been twelve days since I last posted. Here we are, almost to the end of January. The swift passage of time seems impossible and unbelievable.

Where have I been? What have I been doing? My friend, who is the Jazzman’s closest cousin’s wife (did you follow that?), is running for the Ohio State House of Representatives in District 58, and she asked me to be her campaign treasurer. I’ve been very busy with those duties. Then, coincidentally, she needed her website built. That’s one of the hats I wear in my other life—website administration. My son agreed to take care of the build for her, and I’ve been very busy loading pages and tweaking the look.

I don’t even want to think about the number of projects that are sitting and waiting in the basement. They’ll just have to wait. In the past week I’ve had an in-person job interview with one company and a phone interview with another company. I think a lot about my cyber-fiber-friend Shams, who recently started working at Google. She’s having difficulty finding time to sew, as her commute has lengthened, and the stress of a new job with lots to learn has been challenging for her. Now, there’s no company in Youngstown with the oom-pah-pah of Google, but working full-time again would certainly change the layout of my days and weeks. So I’m pondering that—what to give up, what to clear out, how to restructure life.

This is the first interview I’ve had in three years, despite the dozens of applications I’ve completed and résumés I’ve distributed. So that feels good. Maybe it’s time to completely clean out the basement sewing room, keeping only the bare minimum of supplies. Then, in several years, when I really decide to retire (rather than being forced into it by the economy), I can start over with things I really want to have around me.

The Jazzman and I talk about moving from this beautiful old 2+ story house into a rancher, where our aching, arthritic knees wouldn’t have to maneuver stairs several times each day. If we are able to find exactly what we want and figure out what to do with this house, at least a concerted effort to unclutter and purge now would make the process of packing and moving then much easier.

So, anyway, that’s what’s running through my mind. And now a long-overdue post.

boucle1While on vacation in Maine, I stopped in at Halcyon Yarn in Bath. Oh my gosh, if I owned a yarn store, this is what I would want it to look like, and the people who work there and helped me with my purchases would be just the sort of people I’d want working with me. While there, I was looking not only for a simple knitting project for the last few days of vacation, but I was thinking about my friend-of-many-years, PianoLady, who was preparing for her daughter’s wedding. Each time PianoLady shopped for MOTB dresses, she’d send me pictures. We thought long and hard long-distance together—as good friends of 35 years do—until she found the perfect dress. At Nordstrom, of course.

The wedding was being held aboard a cruise ship in Florida just prior to taking off for a cruise around the Caribbean. And air conditioning being what it is, there was the chance she would need a light and elegant wrap to assure her comfort. When my hands touched Halcyon’s “Signature Collection Victorian Bouclé“, I swooned. It’s the stuff you dream of when clouds are involved. Then I looked at the sample stole hanging in front of the display, I couldn’t stop petting it.

I had the nice ladies at Halcyon send a skein of the bouclé to PianoLady, and bought the pattern from them. Then piano lady changed color choices on her dress, and Halcyon’s color 101 wasn’t going to work. But by then I was dreaming of tossing this scarf around my own shoulders!

So I ordered two more skeins, had PianoLady send me her skein, and packed the yarn, needles, and pattern into my carry-on for my November trip to Europe. It was the perfect travel project. No-thinking-required garter stitch – knit every row. When I got close to the end of the third skein, I decided I wanted a more generous size, so ordered a fourth skein. I finished the stole during our Christmas concerts, and then started to think what I might wear it with. Nothing! Nothing in my wardrobe called out for this stole. So guess where it lives now—on the back of the couch in front of the TV. Anytime I’m a little chilly, down it comes. I feel a touch of old-world elegance when I’m wrapped in this beautiful froth of chocolate brown wool.

This yarn and pattern is one of those vacation purchases that I’m very glad I made.

Bookmark the permalink.

About Jan

Musician and geek and Juris Doctor; lover of fine art and fine craft; mother and grandmother and significant other and friend. Passionate about sewing.

4 Responses to Where Does the Time Go?

  1. Roberta Mehta says:

    Jan, I discovered your blog several months ago and have been following it ever since. I felt we had a lot in common – around the same age, sewing many of the same patterns. Your last post clinched it. I was a tech writer and did some web content. I retired 3 years ago and have been thinking about taking a refresher web design class and looking for some part time work. Good luck with your interviews and keep us posted.

  2. Jan says:

    Roberta, what a nice note. Thanks!

    I put together a quick WordPress site several weeks ago at cochorus.wordpress.com. I just wanted it to be up for six weeks, then to go away, so did not want to purchase a domain that would stick around. This worked perfectly and I did the whole thing myself – didn’t ask my son for any help at all. (Patting self on back.) Then my son and his colleague quickly put up a site over the past two weeks for my friend who is running for state representative – micheleleporehagan.com. Right now I’m maintaining it, but as we get more campaign volunteers and especially ones who have some web knowledge, I’ll hope to be handing it off to someone. I’m feeilng overloaded and longing to just go sit in my sewing room for an hour.

    So nice to “meet” you. Thanks again.

  3. Roberta M says:

    Nice job on the cochorus website, Jan. (I checked it out.) I actually left the IT field in the early 2000s during the .com crash and moved to a more secure job. So I know nada about blogging, platforms, etc. Just an FYI, are you aware that Google has an office here in Pittsburgh? I read several months that they were planning to increase their staff.

    Hope you get a chance to sew a little. Sewing has always been mental health therapy for me. I am hoping to get some sewing time, too, this weekend.

  4. Jan says:

    I know about the Google office and have applied to positions there several times. Ideally, I would like to find something where I don’t have a 60 mi commute each way every day! 😮

    I believe tomorrow will be set aside for sewing, even if only curtains for DGS. Better than nothing, right?!

    Thanks for your note.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *